The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group

‘Just because you’re a werewolf doesn’t mean that you can’t live your life exactly the way you want to.’ This refreshing take on life as a supernatural being sets the tone for Catherine Jinks’ novel. There are no terrifyingly inexplicable murders, no dark arts or flights of luridly coloured fancy.15-year-old Toby Vandevelde is a healthily typical teenage boy – pulling pranks with his mates, quarrelling with his Mum, hiding his secret ambition to dance in order to avoid ridicule – and then he discovers that for one day a month he becomes a werewolf.

We’re given no graphic details of the results of his transformation and we never see it. Instead we are introduced to a disparate group of sickly or unstable vampires and werewolves who exhibit traits – stress, an aversion to blood, illness and anxiety, which are all too human. There is drama in the novel and some violence, but it is never gratuitous and founded on a need to redress the balance on those who abuse werewolves, forcing them to fight, torturing and confining them.

Narrative momentum is lost in the final hundred pages and a firm and sensitive edit would have pared away the repetition and addressed the lack of credulity which slow down an otherwise unusual and entertaining read.